Services

Privacy Policy

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is committed to protecting the privacy of visitors to its websites. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices:

When you visit the Library's website, we collect and store only information to measure the number of visitors to different areas of our sites to assist us in making our sites more useful to you. This information includes:

The IP address of your computer or internet provider

The date and time you accessed our site

The Internet address of the website that referred you to our site

We ask visitors to our site to provide their email address, postal address and/or telephone number only when needed to assist in answering inquiries, providing information, participating in a contest or shipping requested materials and products.

When you create or update a library account, you provide some personal information, such as your name, address, phone number and email address. We collect and use your information to provide our services and communicate with you, and to measure and improve our services over time. We do not sell, lease, or otherwise distribute or disclose your private personal information for non-Library purposes to outside parties unless required by law. Because we engage service providers to perform functions and provide services to us, we may share your private personal information with such service providers subject to confidentiality obligations consistent with this Privacy Policy and state law, and on the condition that the third parties use your private personal data solely on our behalf and pursuant to our instructions.

In accordance with Library Confidentiality Policy, we will not sell, lease or otherwise distribute or disclose your email address, postal address, phone number, borrower records or other personal information for non-Library purposes to outside parties unless required by law.

We will never disclose a child's personal information such as full name, address, etc. ("information that would facilitate or enable the physical or online locating and contacting of a specific individual") without written approval from a parent or legal guardian. We will only display on our sites a child's first name, last initial, location and/or age on our sites to announce contest winners and display user submitted comments.

The Library's websites use "cookies" to allow you access to certain functions (such as the online catalog and electronic resources, etc) within our sites. These cookie files do not capture any personal user information (such as email address or user passwords). Temporary cookie files are automatically deleted when you close your browser.

Photos and videos that appear on the Library's websites may be gathered from public programs, events and library spaces. Photos, images and videos submitted by users for online galleries or contests may also be used by the Library for promotional purposes. To ensure the privacy of individuals and children, images will not be identified using full names or personal identifying information without written approval from the photographed subject, parent or legal guardian.

All credit card transactions (non-resident library fees, fine payments, etc) placed on our sites are protected using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software. This software encrypts the information you input for your safety. In confirming order statuses, we reveal only the last four digits of your credit card number. In order to further to protect your information, always sign off and close the browser when finished using a shared or public computer.

Some Library websites/pages contain links to external sites not maintained by the Library. The Library cannot be responsible for your privacy when you disclose information to outside websites. It is your responsibility to protect your personal information.

From time to time, we may use visitor information for new unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. If our information practices do change, we will post the policy changes on our site to notify you and provide you with the ability to opt out of these new uses. If you have any concerns about how your information is used, please contact the Web Services department.